Sky’s birthday boys put party on hold

It was a good day for Team Sky on today’s 19th stage to Alpe Di Pampeago. On top of keeping hold of both Mark Cavendish’s red jersey and the white jersey of Rigoberto Uran, Brits Geraint Thomas and Ian Stannard both celebrated their birthday.

It was not without a hint of sarcasm that Thomas, 26, described celebrating with a seven hour mountain stage as “fantastic,” yet even with just two days of racing remaining and Uran looking secure in white, he explained that Grand Tour birthday parties at Sky are low key affairs.

“Tonight I’ll just rest up, eat well, have a cake, that’s about it,” he said. “My girlfriend was out on the rest day and she gave me a few cards but that was it; it’s a case of cracking on with this race and getting it done, then going home to just chill out and forget about bike racing.”

Stannard, 25, exhausted as he crossed the line with a broken spoke over 28 minutes behind stage winner Roman Kreuzger, was equally uncelebratory about the day’s riding.

“It’s just hard, isn’t it!? They could have knocked out one climb couldn’t they, they’d still have got the same result,” he said. “Kind of annoying. Oh well, it’s alright.

“I’ll see what the chef cooks up,” he added, “but I’ll be sleeping after that stage.”

Their team mate Mark Cavendish finished safely in the grupetto though clearly had to dig deep to make it up the final finishing climb, which reached gradients of a sprinter-sapping 16 per cent.

After he struggled up the set of steps onto the podium, he received his tenth red jersey as leader of the points classification, a competition he now heads by just 13 points from Joaquin Rodriguez who finished third on today’s stage.

Rodriguez now needs to finish at least fourth on tomorrow’s stage to the Passo dello Stelvio to claim the red jersey, although he can finish as low as eleventh if he picks up the maximum eight points on offer at the day’s intermediate sprint.

The points jersey isn’t the sprinter jersey as such – it rewards consistent aggressiveness – ie contesting all the intermediate sprints and finishing high each day throughout the whole 3 weeks. It tends to get won by sprinters as there are more flat bunch finishes than spread-out mountain finishes. Even if they don’t do well in the mountains they often hang on the jersey.